Free Republic

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Cardinal John J. O'Connor, who as archbishop of New York cultivated and cherished his strong ties with the Jewish community, was born of a mother who was born Jewish. It is not known whether he knew that his mother, Dorothy Gumple O'Connor, was born Jewish. She converted to Catholicism before she met and married Thomas O'Connor, the late cardinal's father. Mary O'Connor Ward, the cardinal's sister, told Catholic New York, newspaper of the New York Archdiocese, that her mother never spoke about having belonged to another faith. The fact that Dorothy O'Connor was Jewish by birth...

A packed commuter train derailed in Queens Friday morning — stranding more than 1,000 people underground, with rescue crews scrambling to get them out, according to the MTA. Passengers described a loud screeching noise just before the train came to an abrupt stop. “The train was shaking and the cars in the front started tilting to the right,” said Melissa Delgado, 33. “I heard a pang and then a screech and then the train came to a halt." The stranded passengers sat on the sweltering subway cars with little information besides a promise from the loudspeaker that “help was on...

New York City’s share of poor people appears to have plateaued since the recession, at 21.4 percent, with more people working in 2012 than the year before, but at lower wages, according to a new city study. Contributing to the city’s economic problems were increases in the number of Asian-Americans, immigrants and residents of Queens slipping into poverty. But under a broader definition of poverty that the city applies, the picture remains grim for a far larger number of New Yorkers. As in 2011, 46 percent, or nearly half of New Yorkers, were making less than 150 percent of the...

Laws in New York and Chicago making electronic cigarettes subject to the same regulations as tobacco are taking effect, and their sellers and users are steadfast in their opposition. The New York ban—along with the measure in Chicago, one that previously went into effect in Los Angeles and federal regulations proposed last week—are keeping debate smoldering among public health officials, the e-cigarette industry and users. …

Ask Andrew W.K.: Should I Buy a Gun? Dear Andrew, I’ve always been a staunch opponent of guns, but my home has been broken into twice in the last six weeks. Now I’m think- ing about purchasing a gun to protect my family and home. My wife is very much against this idea, and we fight about it of- ten. I completely understand where she’s coming from, as her views on the dangers of owning a gun used to be my own. What do you think? Should I get a gun? One Shot Dear One Shot, Guns are intense. They...

In New York, Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown announced yesterday that a taxi driver, 69-year-old Rodolfo Sanchez, has been charged with stealing more than $28,000 from the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) by, “crossing the Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Bridge and entering the Midtown Tunnel without making a toll payment on more than four thousand separate occasions by ‘piggybacking’ on cars directly in front of his cab between 2012 and 2014.” District Attorney Brown says that Mr. Sanchez would tailgate the a vehicle in front of his cab, “thus allowing both vehicles to pass through the toll lane before the...

The City Council’s proposed budget to be unveiled Wednesday will push for two big priorities: free lunch for all public school kids and 1,000 new cops. The Council is asking for $24 million to provide lunches regardless of how much money kids’ families make. They’re also seeking $94 million to boost the police force to more than 36,400 cops, among other changes proposed to Mayor de Blasio’s budget. …

New York (AFP) - New York police Tuesday were eating extra helpings of humble pie after asking people to post images of themselves and NYPD officers on Twitter -- only to face a deluge of pictures of alleged police brutality. "Do you have a photo w/ a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD. It may be featured on our Facebook," the department posted on its NYPD News Twitter feed, hoping to fuel a feel-good, low-cost public relations campaign. -snip- One image showing police after striking a protestor brought the remark "Here the #NYPD engages with its...

Mayor Bill de Blasio is pulling back the reins on his plans to quickly get rid of New York City’s horse-drawn carriage industry, stung by a recent outpouring of support for the colorful coaches that have clip-clopped their way through Central Park for more than 150 years. A campaign pledge to take on the horses during his first week as mayor was eclipsed by other issues. […] What changed? For one, a media blitz led by actor Liam Neeson has portrayed the horse-drawn carriage industry as an iconic, romantic part of New York that provides about 400 jobs, many to...

An Egyptian cleric defended the Sept. 11 attacks in a broadcast interview, saying it left Muslims and non-Muslims around the world happy, according to a tape played for the jury at his terrorism trial on Monday. Mustafa Kamel Mustafa could be heard casually speaking of the attacks in the undated interview with a Canadian broadcaster, even equating what al-Qaida did to the hero in American movies. “Everybody was happy when the planes hit the World Trade Center,” Mustafa said in the interview. “Anybody who tell you he was not happy, they are hypocrites.” …

We are all miserably accustomed to being informed that our rights must be curtailed because the Founders “couldn’t have imagined” the way in which they would eventually be exercised. “Well, sure it made sense to have an armed population back when the people only had muskets,” this argument tends to go. “But now that four-year-old children can buy semi-automatic nuclear death-rays with their Happy Meals, it’s just anachronistic.”

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- After receiving her new health coverage in January through the New York State of Health Marketplace, Arden Heights resident Margaret Figueroa, 49, who suffers from two chronic illnesses, went to her pharmacy to fill her prescriptions. Although her insurance company, EmblemHealth, assured her she was covered, her insurance card was denied. While she had signed up for new health coverage -- because her insurance carrier dropped her old plan -- the company's internal paperwork apparently wasn't filed. She also learned that all her long-time doctors didn't accept the new insurance plan. For Ms. Figueroa, who suffers...

Suffering from a clear lack of intellectual honesty, the morally bankrupt progressive socialist mayor of New York City seems to have a knack for tax avoidance. (And remember: despite what Harry Reid would have you believe, tax avoidance is not a crime.) According to public records, Bill “punish the rich” de Blasio paid a mere 8 percent of his income in federal taxes. Just to put that in context for any liberal that has accidently stumbled across this paragraph: That’s less than that capitalist pig, Mitt Romney paid in prior years. Of course, to be fair, it is possible...

Montreal’s mayor sought to convince Manhattan business leaders Tuesday that his administration is moving past the corruption scandals that brought down his two predecessors and have become the “elephant in the room” when trying to lure investment to Canada’s second-largest city. At a luncheon speech to the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Denis Coderre said he is looking to New York City for inspiration. He highlighted the creation of Montreal’s Inspector General’s office, which has sweeping powers to investigate municipal contracts. The new agency is inspired partly by New York City’s Department of Investigations, created in 1873 in response to...

15 April 2014 Last updated at 19:14 ET New York police disband Muslim 'eavesdropping' unit The New York Police Department has disbanded a secret programme designed to eavesdrop on Muslims to identify potential terrorism threats. The Demographics Unit had dispatched plainclothes detectives to listen to conversations and build files on places frequented by Muslims, US media say. The squad had been the subject of two federal lawsuits in the past, and drew ire from civil rights groups. It is also said to have sowed Muslim mistrust for law enforcement. "This reform is a critical step forward in easing tensions between...

A border patrol officer who crashed his van into a civilian car blamed the accident on the other driver — but little did he know, the civilian had a secret camera installed in his vehicle.

<p>NEW YORK (AP) — Capping two days devoted to praising the advances of the civil rights movement, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama attended the Broadway revival of "A Raisin in the Sun," a play about an African-American family in 1950s Chicago.</p>

New York City’s welfare system is managed out of a boxy 25-story office building on Water Street in Lower Manhattan. Approximately 5,000 employees work there, directing government programs that provide billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded assistance to the poor and near-poor. A solid majority of the workers at 180 Water Street are African-American or Latino; their voter registration is almost certainly overwhelmingly Democratic; and all but about 300 of them are union members. But from 1995 until this past December, the people who worked in New York’s principal social-services agency were leading one of the most conservative and successful welfare...

More than a million children attend public schools in New York City. About 780,000 of them are poor enough to qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch. Getting into the program requires some paperwork, which is a burden but not a terrible one; the application is just one page. So why do so many eligible children — about 250,000 — not participate? The problem, advocates for schoolchildren say, isn’t so much aversion to the menu — today across the city, it’s roast turkey, stewed beans, sweet plantains and an oatmeal raisin cookie (plus chickpea salad, for high schoolers) — as...

An innocent man who spent nearly a quarter century in prison for a murder he did not commit walked out of a Brooklyn courtroom with his freedom and his mother by his side Tuesday. Jonathan Fleming, now 51 years old, was in tears as he hugged his lawyers and family Tuesday after his conviction was thrown out by a judge. "I feel like the time I felt when he was born and the nurse bring him to me," said Patricia Fleming, the mother of the wrongly jailed man. "That's how happy I was." From the start, Fleming proclaimed his innocence...